


At the Interval

by AuthorGod



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Feelings, I wrote this on accident, Introspection, M/M, Taako POV, The stolen century arc, i just have some feelings, it's not all angst, so intermittent and temporary character death is implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 01:54:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12620516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorGod/pseuds/AuthorGod
Summary: Time grows stagnant.  Taako watches as world become fractured and consumed, cultures and civilizations wiped out. All the potential a single person is capable of in a lifetime, just ripped away in a moment.It doesn't get to him, and it doesn't get to him, and it doesn't until it does.





	At the Interval

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick note to say that this...thing... I have done.. Is in a pretty locked perspective, very internalized thought and action. I love my IPRE lads, but the focus is definitely on Taako's internal monologue and the relationship at hand. I don't know why I'm giving that as a disclaimer??

He’s minutes from dying.

The Hunger cracks the sky and punches down into the earth like so many brutal fists, and they’re not going to make it back to the others. It won’t be long now. Taako watches from where he’s thrown over Magnus’ shoulder as they run, his hair is coming loose from its tie and falling in his eyes. He casts blind, hurls spells into the swirl of violence. Some spells strike, but do very little otherwise to slow the onslaught. Taako winces when the his final missile is shredded, its connection in his mind to the spell severing abruptly on impact and he lowers his wand in resignation. He holds up his hand and watches as formless magical energy travels across his palms, wraps weakly around his fingers, and flickers out.

“That’s it,” he calls to Magnus over the cacophony of a world being torn asunder, “I’m outta juice!” Magnus, being Magnus, responds by tightening his grip on Taako’s body, and keeps going. “Why are you still running!” Taako shouts, pounds a fist on Magnus’ shoulder and gestures emphatically behind him. “There’s nowhere to go! There’s nowhere to go.” In the distance there’s screaming, shrill and afraid.

Usually Taako is thankful for it, Magnus shielding them all with his body, giving time to escape, turning certain death into a fighting chance. But not this time. They’re _going_ to die, that big shitty storm of nightmares is _going_ to take them down. At this point it’d just be easier to sit down in the dirt of this ruined world and let it happen, let the bonds stitch them back together in a couple hours. But it’s not in Magnus’ nature to give up, fighting until the very last moment, and so he runs for god knows how long until his arm around Taako begins trembling, until Taako can hear his breath go from even to strained to ragged. His pace slows, then stops and the Hunger gathers toward them.

Taako allows Magnus to slide him to standing, together they turn and face what’s coming. Magnus puts his hands over his head and tries to breath. “Sorry,” he pants, “Not fast enough.”

Taako shrugs and rolls his eyes as the Darkness dramatically twists and forms and hurtles toward them in a giant wave, getting taller and taller. “Is that really fucking necessary? You’re gonna _crush_ us to death?” Taako motions around at the clearing, and screams, “It’s just two of us!” 

His complaints are ignored as the wave towers over them, preparing to strike. Taako looks up to Magnus at the same moment Magnus glances down at him. 

“Well big g--”

But his words are muffled, forgotten, because then Magnus is grabbing him by the waist, one hand cradling the curve of Taako’s neck, and he’s dipping Taako back, pressing a gentle but determined kiss to his lips. 

It’s over as quickly as it begun, Taako barely has time to register the warmth of Magnus’ mouth before he pulls back, their noses brushing.

“W-- What was _that_?” 

Magnus blinks once in a daze before his eyes light in alarm, “I..uh…shit! We’re about to die and--”

“Yeah, for like five minutes we’ll be dead!”

“Sorry! I didn’t think that far ahead!” Magnus’ eyes travel helplessly across Taako’s face, “I just..”

Taako’s eyes flick past Magnus’ ear to where the wave is beginning to descend on them and--

“Do it again!” Taako shouts as he can feel the gust of wind preceding the crest break against them, sending Taako’s hat flying backward. “You’re right it doesn’t matter, do it again!” and he pulls Magnus down by the collar, would much rather be distracted by Magnus’ weight, and the firm grip of his hands on Taako’s skin, than focused completely on being crushed through the fucking crust of the earth.

Bliss, just for a moment. Warmth and affection, and a brief flicker of longing before Taako locks that away into its own place. Magnus strokes a thumb over his cheek, and it’s so simple and so plain a gesture, but Taako’s heart glitches anyway.

Taako hardly even notices when he feels something in his body break.

\---

 

Taako draws a swirling pattern in the excess flour on the table. “Lup.. It’s a terrible idea. You know it is.”

“What?” she asks, squints at him as she tries to read his microexpressions. “Why?”

“I mean for one? He wears bootcut jeans unironically. Two, I saw him eat a ketchup sandwich yesterday. No, don’t laugh I’m serious! Just bread and ketchup, who does that? And three?” Taako thinks a moment. “I swear I was going to take this one to the grave, but.. I saw Barry drink a whole box of wine and tongue kiss Greg Grimaldis behind a dumpster at a barbecue.”

Lup looks at him a moment before bursting out into laughter, the kind that has her eyes watering and nose scrunching, and Taako laughs too. She grabs a handful of flour and flings it in his direction. It arcs in motes of sunlit gold as it twists past the window, dusts white over Taako’s tawny hands and he brushes it away.

“Lemme get this straight. You’re saying I shouldn’t make a love connection based on his highly fucking questionable condiment habits? Because I can get him new jeans so that’s not a prob--”

“He’s human Lup,” Taako says, serious again. “Ninety years top and doneso. You know we aren’t gonna be at this forever.” The recycling of years that is, the constant outrunning the scourge of Hunger. “It has to stop someday and if we’re still alive at the end of it, then what? You’ll lose Barry hundreds of years before you’re ready, and it’ll break your heart. Don’t do that to yourself, Lulu.” 

Taako doesn’t tell her that he’s afraid he’ll lose her too somehow, not through death so much, but the kind of loss that is less definable or quantifiable, irrational and little bit selfish. 

She looks at him closely, then out of the window to the roiling sea, “Don’t you get tired of it though? Being alone?”

“We have each other.” Even though he knows that’s not what she means.

“But sometimes don’t you want _more_?”

More of what, he’s not certain. Taako opens his mouth, closes it, traces his fingertips through the flour again, and ignores that aching bit which calls out for gentle hands and new sort of warmth.

\---

He doesn’t know what leads him here, to Magnus’ room in the middle of the night. Lack of options, possibly, the sense of safety that comes with Magnus’ proximity, certainly. Lup’s more or less moved into Barry’s quarters, she’s there most nights and it’s okay. Taako’s never seen her so happy. But the quiet at night is like a tomb and when Taako closes his eyes, he sees nothing but shadows, the Hunger, and although it has no teeth or jaws, it’s mouth always there. Devouring them whole.

Taako slides open Magnus’ door and after a brief moment of indecision, he creeps quietly over to his bed. “Hey,” he whispers. Then a bit louder, “Hey, big guy.” He pokes Magnus’ shoulder and Magnus startles violently, jerks his hands up in a defensive position, and for a second Taako braces for a hit.

“Taako..?”

“Yeah, um.”

“Oh, sorry,” he lets the squared off posture in his shoulders fall, uncurls his fist and stares down at his empty palms.

“It’s fine, I have em’ too.” Taako clears his throat and decides to go with a direct approach, tells Magnus, “Scoot over, lemme in there actually.”

Taako can see the question in Magnus’ eyes, but still he wordlessly complies and pulls back the covers, makes a space for Taako to climb in. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Nnnope, never,” Taako says, lies awkwardly on his back, flips the end of his plait from under his shoulders and pretends to examine the silvery split ends. If they don’t end up on a spa world soon, he’s gonna fucking lose it.

“Cool and not weird at all,” Magnus murmurs, but he doesn’t tell Taako to leave and he doesn’t question why he’s here, just turns on his side and faces the wall.

It’s ages before he speaks again, “Do you ever think about home,” His voice is muffled against the pillow. Taako sighs in frustration and Magnus turns toward him. “Look, you show up in my room in the middle of the night and wake me up--”

“--I don’t,” Taako lies, “I don’t think about it. I don’t miss it.” He turns his head to look at Magnus, “And you shouldn’t either. It’s not like we can go back and save it.”

Magnus watches him a moment then closes his eyes and snuffles back down against his pillow. “I don’t believe you, you know.”

“What?”

“When you act like you don’t care,” he yawns and his knuckles graze Taako’s arms as he shifts. “I think it’s just something you want us to think.”

Taako has no idea what to say to that, tries a couple times to try and formulate a comeback, but the silence stretches out too far. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t. Magnus’ breath becomes deep and even, he reaches out unconsciously and puts an arm across Taako and pulls him closer. 

Taako tries not to dwell long in past memories, doesn’t care to remember how he and Lup were shunted from one stranger to another, until finally they’d had enough and took the struggle into their own hands. He doesn’t even remember their mother’s face, not really. He can’t recall the exact colour of her eyes, or the curve of her smile, or the space she possessed. 

But he remembers her voice. The sound of a lullaby, the words lost to time. A melody, and that’s all he’s kept from childhood. Taako hums it to himself as he tries to find that quiet space in his head, a place not haunted.

Taako is nearly settled when he hears Magnus murmur, “What song was that?”

“Nothing,” Taako tells him, “go back to sleep.”

“I liked it,” Magnus’ breath tickles the back of Taako’s neck, a warm, comforting in and out. “It was pretty.”

Something tightens in Taako’s chest. Maybe it’s because he’s tired and his impulse control is screwy, but Taako clears his throat and starts from the beginning. Lets loose those familiar chords and stops trying to conjure up the image of mother and a home he never truly knew. No matter how hard he has tried to splice together the shapes, he’s only ever been left with a hollow sense of ambivalence, and what good is nostalgia here? Where worlds are senselessly torn apart and consumed, and everyone and everything is either always going or gone. 

She was there one day, then she wasn’t.

And they were alone.

\---

It’s easy to get affection from Magnus, he gives it of himself freely, never asking for more than what is offered. He wordlessly makes room when Taako seeks him out in the night, allows him into his bed. He never touches Taako, aside from a heavy arm across his abdomen to draw him close, his nose to the nape of Taako’s neck. And for the life of him, Taako can’t understand how such gentleness can almost be unbearable, or explain the dull gnaw in his chest when the shadows cast through the window cling in slurs across Magnus’ skin.

 

\---

 

Barry dies in Plant World from a fucking _asthma_ attack. 

Davenport dies when a faulty conduit electrocutes him.

Magnus and Lucretia die when a metropolis collapses in a freak earthquake.

Merle just dies and dies and dies and _dies_. 

Lup gets killed two weeks into a cycle by hostile combatants, and Taako collapses on the floor when Magnus and Barry return bloodied and alone. A hand reaches out to touch his shoulder, but Taako blinks away before they can comfort him. Taako cries in his bunk that night, then goes out a month later and ends up getting killed by the same people. 

Time grows stagnant. Taako watches as worlds become fractured and consumed, cultures and civilizations wiped out. All the potential a single person is capable of in a lifetime, just ripped away in a moment.

It doesn’t get to him, and it doesn’t get to him, and it doesn’t until it does.

Years and years of frustration and failure, the heaviness that goes bone deep, all the lives Taako has lived versus the billions of lives that have passed underneath his hands, it’s too much. He acts like he doesn’t care, but he does, of course he does. He’s not fucking heartless. 

Magnus walks into the arcana lab to deliver some components they’d asked for, catches Taako in the middle of his blank stare in which he contemplated the horrible price of so many failures. 

“Where’s Lup and Barry?” he asks, dumps an armful of this and that in front of Taako and stands beside him. 

“It’s just me.” Taako says, his voice distant to his own ears.

Magnus shifts, “Hey,” he tries to guide Taako’s line of sight toward him, “You good?” Fingers brush the line of Taako’s jaw until he’s looking up at Magnus; his concerned face, his big brown human eyes. And no, no no, he doesn’t want that. He needs heat and slick and pressure, something to hold him down, an incomprehensible weight equal to his own to carry and share all of _this_.

“Not really.” 

“How can I help?” 

Taako doesn’t even think about it. He goes up on his tiptoes, and slinging an arm around the back of Magnus’ neck, he draws him down into a kiss; slants his lips over Magnus’ surprised mouth. It’s as gentle as he remembers, from so many cycles back, when they were still new to each other. When they hadn’t lived and died together for half a century and seen such unbearable loss, and Taako has been so fucking _alone_ always, and Magnus is--is--

Taako shuts those thoughts off, gets his hands in Magnus’ wild hair and pulls him closer, fits his body flush to a larger frame.

“Mmf--w-wait,” Magnus stammers and tries pulling back, even though he’s already got hands edging down the small of Taako’s back, even though he’s talking and kissing and backing Taako up against the ledge of the table and his eyes get darker and darker. “Do you want-- are you like--” he manages to pull away long enough to bracket Taako’s face with both of his hands and hold him back. “Are you _sure_?”

“Yep,” Taako says impatiently, tries to lean in again but Magnus squeezes his eyes closed for a moment and keeps talking.

“Because I.. I think you’re amazing. And if we were to.. I like you a lot.”

Taako takes a deep breath, and he doesn’t do this, the talking. “Maggie, please,” Magnus looks at him, really looks at him. “I can’t.. I have to feel something other than _this_.” The failure, the horror of realities being unmade, right out from under their hands, the lives they’ve let perish simply because there was no other choice. The weight of it. All of it. “Do you understand?”

And he sees it there in Magnus’ eyes as well, that horrible weight, when he whispers, “I do,” and pulls Taako toward him. 

This time the kiss is steady and deliberate, gentle to frantically seeking something in an instant, and one moment Taako is on his feet, and the next moment Magnus is digging his fingers into Taako’s waist and hoisting him up onto the table as he sweeps everything off it in one great mess. Taako pulls Magnus down with him, shivers at the first touch of metal against his back, but that stops quickly as he pulls Magnus’ shirt up and off over his head and god, he’s burning hot. Warm and solid and stronger than anything Taako has ever known, he pushes up against him and feels a thrill spark low and intent in his spine when Magnus’ breath catches against Taako’s lips. His fingers bump over bone and flexing muscle, slides over the bulge in Magnus’ trousers and rubs him there. Magnus makes a sort of pained, defenseless sound, and that seems like a good thing so Taako strokes him again.

Magnus kisses him like their lives are hung in the balance, tries to say Taako’s name but it comes out so battered and breathless Taako can barely make it out. It drives away the fear of being unwanted, of aloneness and emptiness, soothes the away the sucking hollow in Taako’s gut. There’s something bordering on panic in the way Magnus touches him, in how he scrapes his fingers against the grooves of Taako’s ribs, grips the tops of his thighs to bring their cocks in alignment. He noses open the collar of Taako’s shirt and presses his mouth feverishly to the cup of his throat, rests his head just there, ear to Taako’s chest, as he holds Taako’s body and slides him down the table, back up, down and up. 

It escalates quickly, from those small abortive thrusts, to _oh god oh god_ and _right there, there_ and all the urgent whines and soft grunts between the two. It’s a ragged, stuttering rhythm within minutes. Taako barely manages to undo Magnus’ belt, neither of them get trousers or skirt or underwear out of the way, but it’s heat and friction and it’s all either of them seem to need. There’s no finesse on either of their behalf, but it is by no means _bad_. Taako has a very shallow pool of experience to draw from maybe, but no. Not bad. The clumsiness and desperation makes it sweet somehow; to be alive and to need. To want something beyond survival. And Magnus is just so _good_ , a far cry from the bitter roots somewhere inside Taako, living in a place he can not see or touch, and took hold there so long ago. It’s as if the loneliness and the affection are one in the same, stemming up from the same desperate spot.

Magnus comes first, pushing in uncontrollable short shoves against the inside of Taako’s thigh. Taako can feel the build of tension and he holds on hard to Magnus to keep from slipping away, arms locked over his shoulders. Magnus buries his face in the crook of Taako’s neck, a series of surprised _ah’s_ , voice gone a little high in a way Taako has never heard before, but already wants to hear again and that’s...oh..that’s.. Something

Magnus’ pace falters and Taako can feel dampness spreading against the thin material of his skirt and leggings. He draws out one more rough thrust, one hand tightening slightly in the hair at Taako’s nape, and then Taako is all shake and light-limbed and unintelligible sounds underneath him. An involuntary charge of magic energy arcs across Taako’s palms and jolts Magnus a little because he gasps and buckles a bit. 

They breathe heavily into the silence as Taako shudders out dim aftershocks. Magnus nudges their foreheads together, and thank god his eyes are closed so he can’t see the bewildered look that settles across Taako’s face. Hair that’s come loose from Magnus’ messy bun tickles Taako’s cheek. He idly tucks it back behind Magnus’ ear, easy, like it’s something he’s done always and Magnus leans into that touch until it’s Taako cupping his cheek. Until it’s Taako running a curious thumb over a faint scar just there. Until it’s a caress, so gentle and natural that it makes something inside Taako come unmoored, ache.

\----

Neither one of them talk about it afterward. A moment of weakness borne through existential crisis, easily explained and departed from. No reason to think it would happen again.

Therefore it’s surprising when it happens again barely 48 hours later, down on the bed with a bump, their hands down each other’s pants. Their clothes on the floor. Not quick like last time, but still like they’re running out of time, despite having an abundance of it. 

“I have to tell you something,” Taako whispered to him in the middle of dinner while no one else paid attention.

“‘Kay, shoot,” he whispered back

“No, you don’t-- I have to _tell you something_ ,” and Taako saw the moment he understood, a quick light in his eyes as he nodded and excused himself . Taako followed later, not knowing where to look, before a hand had shot out from inside Taako’s room and drug him in by the elbow.

Magnus’ breath on Taako’s throat.  
Taako’s ankles locked around Magnus’ hips as he buries himself. 

The wild, restless sensation clattering away in Taako’s chest when Magnus pulls Taako up and onto his lap, holding him still at the waist while his eyes travel across Taako’s face like Taako is something worth holding on to. It’s then, in that moment, if any, that Taako knows that somewhere, he’s playing a dangerous game. 

Fingers cup the tips of his ears, smoothes the hair from Taako’s face and caress his cheek, a thumb traces his bottom lip, before Taako can’t bear the tenderness anymore and he rolls his hips, hard, feels Magnus twitch inside of him when he gets teeth against Magnus’ pulse. Magnus hisses a breath, twists Taako back onto the bed, takes him down, hips snapping. “Oh fuck,” he says softly, helplessly, like _Taako_ is the one with all the control and he’s hopeless to resist. 

The empty centimeters between them fills with Taako’s voice when the tension finally peaks, and Magnus shuts his eyes tight, curls his right shoulder into Taako’s arm when he comes inside him moments later. 

 

“This isn’t what you think it is.” Taako tells Magnus afterward as he sits on the corner of the bed and re-plaits his hair. “All right?”

Magnus kisses slowly up his spine, “You don’t know what I think,” he says so plainly that Taako can’t even find the words to argue. 

\---

Magnus resets after a particularly brutal death on a hostile plane, takes the fall instead of Taako. The lightning bolt that had been cast was meant for him, until Magnus knocked him out of its path. Taako seeks him out as soon as he gets a chance. He barges into his quarters and slams into him, grabs the man by the front of his shirt and starts shaking him. Magnus just stands there, sort of startled and allows it, which only makes Taako angrier because over and over again for the past seven months the image of Magnus crumpling to the ground, blood matted in his hair, the light going out of his eyes, has been stuck in Taako’s brain.

“Why would you do that?” he shouts at him, doesn’t care anymore if anyone hears. “You’re so stu-- Do you even _think_?” 

“It would’ve killed you,” his voice is so bewildered and guileless that it hurts Taako to hear it.

“So? So what?” Taako feels something raw and choking creeping up the back of his throat, making his own voice high and hoarse. “I’ve died before, all of us have, I would have been fine! Don’t do that for me, not for _me_.”

“I--” he shakes his head, “I wasn’t going to let them hurt you. Anyone. Not if I could help it,” and his eyes are so soft and concerned and it’s _terrible_ because Taako can’t stay angry at him when he looks like that. 

Magnus reaches out as Taako tries breathing around the lump in his throat, slowly slides his fingers up Taako’s forearms until they clasp over the fists balled and trembling at the center of his chest. The purple bruise from his initial state is reset over his cheek, and Taako casts his eyes away from it. “Stop,” Taako whispers, meaning the dying, the rushing in, the sacrificing. One day it’ll be the last time and Magnus’ type, the selfless kind, they all have early expiration dates.

Magnus holds him tight against his chest until the trembling stops, until all that’s left is the yearning and the deep blue relief.

\----

“This isn’t gratitude by the way,” Taako murmurs later as he slides down Magnus’ body, the trip made long by exposed skin that he nips and kisses. He walks his fingers down to Magnus’ pants tie and undoes it, gently takes takes the silky hot length him out.

“You’re not exactly- and by no means am I complaining- discouraging me from future acts of hero _ism_ ,” his breath catches at Taako’s first wet kiss to the tip, and Magnus’ hands find their way down to his hair. It isn’t long before he has Magnus making those sounds, trying not to fuck up into Taako’s mouth and mostly failing, and after he comes he is immediate in dragging Taako back up. Kisses his mouth like it’s the whole goddamn world and he’ll never be satisfied. Magnus asks him what he wants, and Taako never never never knows how to answer, because he wants so much in spite of himself. 

\---

 

He still has nightmares, but they’ve gotten easier somehow. In his dreams he’s alone, they’re all alone, and everyone is screaming. He wakes up, disoriented and sweating, but then there’s Magnus’ hands pulling Taako to his chest, holding tight and protective. Taako remembers the dream, and the looking, and the calling, and the darkness, and the fear. But it’s out there, and Taako is here, safe where the aloneness can not find him.


End file.
